//------------------------------// // The strange encounter and forest out // Story: The Adventures Begin // by Dragon Shimmer //------------------------------// The team starts to leave the forest but is faced with many monsters. Now, they encounter a turtle with a rhino horn and a big tree on its back named the "Leaf Eater".     The monster charges at Natalie, but it is obstructed by Matt. Natalie cast a fireball at the turtle, and the turtle jerked back and started shaking itself. As soon as it falls, it becomes a razor-sharp object that launches itself at the team. Sunset teleports to the front and quickly drags the staff to the ground, the firewall appears after that and it burns its "Razor leaf" down, then she teleports to the turtle's back and uses "Flame Slash" to cut down the tree on turtleback, the tree falls much to surprise for turtle, it tries to charge again but Lance gives it a "Snipe" to shoot headshot and it goes down.  "Good work, team!" Matt cheers.  Natalie and Lance both replied, "Thank you.".  "And we have a weird mage in the team", Matt teases Sunset before he dodges her "Flame Slash". He shouts, "Hey! Don't use that spell on your teammate, you two hooves walking pony"      "As long as you don't mess with me, we'll be fine, and I am not a weird mage, do you know?"     It's too weird, what kind of mage goes into melee like a swordsman, huh?" Matt teases her.    Sunset rolled her eyes and said, "Hey, I can cast range spells as well."      You two stop arguing already, we are trying to find our way out here," Lance said in an agitated tone. "Ok, we have to cross a river, and I guess some foes too," He said while looking at the map. "This way"   Following their journey, the team feels that they are almost out of the forest until they encounter an unusual enemy, a cat with no back legs and a wooden horse with wooden wheels (like a Trojan horse). They block the bridge completely. Sunrise looks at it strangely, but others are already in battle position, so she'll ask them later.     A cat on the wooden horse blows a trumpet to gain the morale of other cats and to summon them. Then, the wooden horse charges at them. The team dodges aside, except for Sunset, who gets a direct hit, but used "Shield" before it so that she would take less damage, then flew painfully toward the trees.  Matt stands in front of Sunset while the others cover her with shields. The cat on the horse grabs a barrel of explosion and tries to throw it at them, but is cut short by the shot of Lance, so the barrel explodes and destroys the cat. The ground cat starts charging at them, Matt swings his sword and cuts down many of them, Lance tries to shoot down as many as he can, and Natalie uses "Fireball" and "Ice" to try to take them down but too many of them. The Team is going to be down.  "There are too many of them. What should we do?" Matt shout  "I don't know, I wish I could cast "Firestorm" to slay them all." Natalie starts remorsefully.   The cats prepare for their final attack. The cats are suddenly unable to move, they are confused immediately and try to struggle out. The Team is confused as well, they found that all the cats are rooting in some kind of earth spell. Turning their heads back, they see Sunset putting one of her front hooves on the ground to keep the earth spell going. Matt sees that and uses the chance to throw the sword at them, killing most of them, before the sword returns to him. Nicole uses "fireball" and "ice shard" while Lance shoots them all. Now, the team sits and sighs for relief.   Sunset says in between breaths, "I never thought cats could be so... many and so dangerous."  "Are you sure you're okay? You got hit hard by that wooden horse," Natalie wonders.  "I'm fine. I just need a rest because I've run out of mana. But I suggest we set up camp here so we can rest."   "Good idea, now let's set up camp."    After the battle of the cats, the team sets up camp, and Sunset has to eat meat even though she is a pony and ponies don't eat meat. Following the dinner, they take guard charge to follow the time. As Sunset and Matt are now in the guard, they sit down and talk     Sunset complaint "Today is not a good day for me."    "Yeah, but we have a lot of those," Matt said, and Sunset rolled her eyes.    "I didn't think that this bipedal training could bring such great results at first, I thought it would be useless training. But today I see how effective it is." Sunset smile.    "Well, there is another disadvantage of quadruple stance if you agree or not."     "And that is?"       "How do you grab something?"      '"Eh... Levitation spell."     "Can you cast another spell while grabbing like that?"       Sunset thinks a little quiet, "some unicorns can, but they have to train hard"      As you can see, you cannot cast a spell while holding things. This quadruple stance makes you waste a lot of spells that you have just learned since you will either be unarmed or armless to cast spells."    "Wow. You are crazy, you know that. However, I agree with you, I cannot choose both of them at the same time."    He pats her head, "I know.".    She smiles, "Really crazy."    The next morning, the team passes the bridge to cross the river and another one, they meet an old man who gets hurt a lot. Natalie and Sunset (for training) heal him and ask him what happens. The old man says there is a robot that has blocked the bridge to get out of this forest. The team's eyes widen when they hear that but they still go there to get out as soon as possible without planning. As the team meets the robot, it is a pumpkin robot. The pumpkin robot has an eye at the top of its body, has two big holes as fake eyes and a big mouth; it also has two big metal arms and two legs. The team inhales and steps forward to challenge the robot.      Lance uses a scanner to scan the robot, learning that it has flamethrowers and cannons on its mouth, and machine guns on its eye. Its eyes glow and it shoots machine guns at the team, but some bullets hit them, making them sting. Matt charged at the robot, but the robot's arm blocked his attack. The robot reveals the machine gun in its eye and points it at Matt. It is destroyed when Natalie uses "Lightning" on it, whereas Lance uses "Flame Shot" but it is not very effective.  The robot finds this annoying, so it slams into the ground to make the smoke blind team members. They now stand in a circle in order to keep the robot from attacking them. Suddenly, a fist stuck into Sunset's body, making her fly and drop to the ground. She coughs some blood and just lays there, not going to get up at the moment.    Natalie and Lance shouted "SUNSET" before being sent flying and collapsing at the same time. Sunset is trying to wake up.   "Lance, Natalie!" shouted Matt. The pumpkin robot stands before Matt, and he stares at it angrily. His sword now has a red aura around it, and he charged forward. As the robot lifts its arm and tries to punch Matt, Matt dodges and slashes it leaving a scar on its body. He slashes it three more times; the fourth slash cuts off the robot arm and he slashes it one more time, it sends flying backward. Matt is breathing heavily.     Finally, it's done. Now I must- " before he could finish the sentence, the robot punched him in the face and sent him flying. It now has scars throughout its body and appears to be nearly destroyed. Matt then gets up and stances in a defensive stance but is too tired to fight. Matt and the pumpkin robot will charge together.      Before the pumpkin robot charges Matt, it suddenly gets wrapped in some kind of flame chain making the robot struggle to get out, four giant swords made of fire appear on the robot's head and stab through the robot's body then explode, the robot vanishes without any tray because of the explosions. Matt is confused about what just happened and turns around. He sees Sunset flying without any wings and covered in some kind of red aura, her front hooves have a magic circle around them. Then, her aura disappears and she struggles to get up by the staff.   "You're doing that, isn't it?" Matt inquires     "I don't ... know, I see you charging at it and just thinking about protecting yourself and others, then ... I don't know, Sunset is going to lay on the ground, but Matt grabbed her. "Thank you." Matt nods.     "Now you shouldn't try to get up now, I will take you and others to the safety spot," said Matt, and Sunset nod, think that will be the best. Matt carried her on his back and drag others past the bridge. By the time he passed the bridge, he set up a camp near it and gave first aid to Natalie, Lance, and then to Sunset. Sunset is going to say she is fine but her body betrays her.    "Don't strain yourself here, pony" said Matt as he is wrapping the bandage around her chest.       "I'm fine, ok?" Sunset tries to retort     "Yeah but your body says different" Matt is wrapping the bandage around her head. Sunset sighs in defeat.    "You gonna "pillowed" me, don't you? You and Natalie do that every night." Sunset says in an annoying tone.    "Maybe," Matt admits and hugs Sunset. "Sorry, but your fur makes me sleep better," Sunset rolls her eyes. "Besides this is a good chance to hug you soon though." Matt laughs as Sunset huffs and says "you cheater".    Later, Natalie and Lance then wake up    "What happened?" Natalie asked.     "I thought we were still on the battlefield, where am I?" Lance confused, Matt comes in with Sunset in his hold.     "Finally, you two are awake" Matt cheered    "Can you tell me what happened before?" asked Natalie and Matt to say all the things that happened. She was surprised by Sunset's outburst as she can use so much mana at the same time.    "Look like we owe you one now, Sunset," Lance says.    "You're welcome, we're teammates, remember?" Sunset nods. .    "But you should control your mana more, Sunny" suggested Natalie.    "I will try," Sunset whines.    Natalie then claps the hand at the chest, an white orb appeared and spread its dust around. The wound of the team has now completely healed without any scar.    " You have to teach me that," Sunset suggests, and Natalie smiles.    "You know the price," Natalie grin at her, and Sunset sighed. "Fine."     "I got a BBQ party outside, you must join now."    "Wait, where did you get meat to make BBQ?" Sunset goes outside and sees that Matt is roasting the slime. He picks up each stick of slime and gives it to each member. The trio is now scared but sigh, they try to eat them but the taste is very bad, then the trio has their faces "greened" and gets out immediately to vomit. Matt seems fine but later he got a green face too.     (Achievements: eat the weird thing and poison resistance :) )